"My blood sugar is higher on the weekends": Finding a Role for Context and Context-Awareness in the Design of Health Self-Management Technology

Tools for self-care of chronic conditions often do not fit the contexts in which self-care happens because the influence of context on self-care practices is unclear. We conducted a diary study with 15 adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes and their caregivers to understand how context affects self-care. We observed different contextual settings, which we call contextual frames, in which diabetes self-management varied depending on certain factors - physical activity, food, emotional state, insulin, people, and attitudes. The relative prevalence of these factors across contextual frames impacts self-care necessitating different types of support. We show that contextual frames, as phenomenological abstractions of context, can help designers of context-aware systems systematically explore and model the relation of context with behavior and with technology supporting behavior. Lastly, considering contextual frames as sensitizing concepts, we provide design direction for using context in technology design.